


Fader

by skyfireflies



Category: Naruto
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Growing Up, Introspection, Rape/Non-con References, Regret, Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-18
Updated: 2012-07-18
Packaged: 2017-11-10 05:12:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/462553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyfireflies/pseuds/skyfireflies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At night, while your companions are sleeping, your mind wanders to things you wish you could forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fader

You can’t remember the last time you slept through the night, but you’re pretty sure it was back in Konoha, in your tiny little apartment, when things were black and white and simple. Tonight, you wake drenched in sweat, the feeling of phantom hands roaming your body, violating, and bile rising in your throat. 

You tell yourself he’s dead, Orochimaru is dead, and his hands will never touch you again, but that never seems to stop the nightmares. You tell yourself it was what you wanted, wasn’t it; to gain power, no matter the cost. Well, you’d gained that power. You’d paid for it with the last of your innocence, but there’s nothing to be done about that now. 

On nights like this, clear enough for you to see the stars, you sit and you watch the sky, and you wonder what they’re doing. Naruto. Sakura. Kakashi-sensei. There had been a time you hadn’t thought of them at all, when you were in the snake’s lair, when you were lost in the hunger and the anger and the rage. Now, the longer you have to yourself, the more your mind wanders back to those days in Konoha, to the people you’d left behind. 

You think of Sakura, how -smart- she was, how her smile lit up a room, how when she came to you that night and tried to stop you from leaving, she smelled like the flowers that were her namesake. You think, ‘In another life, I could have loved her,’ but not here, not in this one. Sakura deserves better than you, deserves someone who’s never once made her cry or hurt. 

You think of Kakashi-sensei, and that one hurts far more than you’d thought it would. You’d disappointed him, you knew; he’d looked at you as a son, he’d done his best for you, but it hadn’t been enough. You wonder if he lies awake at night and thinks of all the things he could’ve done differently, and if any of them would have been able to make you stay. 

_(Nothing would have, nothing at all short of death.)_

You think of Naruto. Uzumaki Naruto. When you think of him, you smile, and you feel Karin’s eyes on you in the dark, watching, curious but unwilling to ask. Karin, you think, reminds you of him a little. She is loud, and brash, and has no shame. She speaks her mind and she does what she wants, and maybe, you think, that’s why you brought her along. 

Sometimes, when you wake up unable to breathe, suffocated by your own darkness, you want to go back. You want to go running right back to them, to Konoha, to everything you’d abandoned in your quest for power. 

In your heart, you know you can’t. 

You can never, ever go back. 

Then you think of yellow hair, of blue eyes and whisker-scarred cheeks, and you swear you can almost hear that obnoxious laugh echoing out in the darkness of the night, and you think maybe, just maybe you -can- go back, eventually. As long as that person is there to greet you.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments/kudos much appreciated!


End file.
